* Keith Winston [Jun 20. 2002 12:37]:

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After reading some postings about lilo problems (in combination with Window$) I'm interested in the thoughts of using grub instead of lilo. I believe RH is gone over to using grub, but I want to know which one is 'better'. I know, I know, that's a mainly subjective question, but I'm interested in those subjective opinions :-)

AFAIK, grub doesn't do much more than lilo. I think the one thing grub can do that lilo can't is boot a kernel that is not already defined in the config file. I ran grub for a while, but prefer lilo probably because I know it better, but also because there is nothing compelling about grub, at least for me.

It's does quite some more. It supports filesystems, SCSI and can search for kernel images etc. etc. Really cool piece of software, I use it myself. -- Mads Martin Jørgensen, http://mmj.dk "Why make things difficult, when it is possible to make them cryptic and totally illogic, with just a little bit more effort?" -- A. P. J.

Silviu Marin-Caea wrote:

Mads Martin Joergensen wrote:

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* Keith Winston [Jun 20. 2002 12:37]:

It's does quite some more. It supports filesystems, SCSI and can search for kernel images etc. etc. Really cool piece of software, I use it myself.

And you don't get stuck with a non-bootable computer if you screw up the configuration file. With lilo, you need to boot in rescue mode and fix that, with grub you edit it, boot right, and then fix it.

FWIW: With grub it is soooo easy to configure new kernels compared to lilo, just edit a single file and thats it. Have been using Grub for past two years without problem. Kind regards, Simon

On Thursday 20 June 2002 15:23, Keith Winston wrote:

On Thu, Jun 20, 2002 at 01:40:46PM +0000, Simon Heaton wrote:

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Mads Martin Joergensen wrote:

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* Keith Winston [Jun 20. 2002 12:37]:

It's does quite some more. It supports filesystems, SCSI and can search for kernel images etc. etc. Really cool piece of software, I use it myself.

And you don't get stuck with a non-bootable computer if you screw up the configuration file. With lilo, you need to boot in rescue mode and fix that, with grub you edit it, boot right, and then fix it.

FWIW:

With grub it is soooo easy to configure new kernels compared to lilo, just edit a single file and thats it. Have been using Grub for past two years without problem.

Some of this is information is interesting. I can see an advantage if you can fix your grub config file without booting from a rescue disk. I didn't know it could do that.

But I'm not sure I get the "supports filesystems and SCSI" part. What is the benefit over lilo? Don't you still need to worry about initrd images for the kernel?

LILO is specially for Linux, GRUB is more general purpose and has a lot more options and flexibility. Of course, this also means it can be a lot more complex. GRUB has built in support for a lot of different boot media, IDE, SCSI, network, etc. GRUB can boot a lot of different OS-es and knows quite a lot of different file systems formats. GRUB can find a file in a file system and boot this image. LILO has to know the disk sector before loading the image. So if the file changes LILO has to be re-installed. GRUB can read the filesystem and find the image by name.

How is it easier to configure a new kernel with grub vs. lilo? Lilo also has a single file to edit, unless I am missing something again regarding initrd images.

GRUB is more like a mini operating system, specially written for booting other systems. It's a totally different beast from LILO. When GRUB boots, it loads a config file and show a 'normal' boot menu and can do a 'LILO-like' boot with a menu. The difference is that you can edit an/or override every menu option. You can change the root disk, the kernel image and even the kernel options just before given control to the next boot stage. For instance, I have multiple SuSE versions installed, all with the 'standard' LILO boot sector, but each version has it's bootsector on the root disk and not in the MBR. GRUB is on my MBR and after the startup I can boot the LILO configuration which was created during the install of the distrubution. I don't even have to change the GRUB config to do this, I can type in the options in a sort of command line. (I know: you can also use LILO to boot another LILO, I've done this in the past.) In short: LILO has is more simple and has less options, if it works for you just keep on useing it. If LILO is not enough for you, take a good look at GRUB. It has a lot more potential than LILO but is also a lot more complex.

Best Regards, Keith

Regards, Cees.

To anyone considering using grub, I highly recommend reading this article: http://www2.linuxjournal.com/lj-issues/issue85/4622.html - Robert Storey

On Saturday 22 June 2002 08:28, Robert Sweet wrote:

On Thu, Jun 20, 2002 at 11:51:43AM +0200, Berge, Harry ten beat on the keyboard:

<snip>

Another question...if you want to reinstall grub, would the command be "grub-install /dev/hda or /dev/hd0"? Not sure on syntax because I have read it both ways...thanks

linux -> grub notation: /dev/hda -> (hd0) /dev/hda5 -> (hd0,4) Do a "grub-install -h", you'll see it doesn't matter if you use linux notation or grub notation. /dev/hda would be the Master Boot Record (MBR) of the first HD (!). Leen